Orange soda

The husband and I got to have a night out about two weeks ago. His friend was receiving an award and we went to the gala celebration. It was a lovely night – they served Pepsi, which I forgave due to the fact that during the cocktail hour I was able to walk around with this in my hand:

What a perfect set up – right? (I think these are similar…I may need to get some if I ever get my act together and throw a party – the handle feature is KEY!)

Anyway, I was meeting my husband at the venue which was almost an hour away from our home. I settled into my Uber and started catching up on Facebook and emails. All of a sudden my phone made the craziest sound (ok- just different from my regular alert tone, but it did startle me). I didn’t know what was going on. I checked my texts, email,alarms … and then I saw it. My CocaCola Freestyle app had messaged me! WHAT?!?! It wanted me to know about its latest featured soda mix!

OK- I had NO IDEA it could do that. I’ve never even tried a CocaCola Freestyle machine for more than a Diet Coke, but being NYC Soda Girl, about a month ago I figured I should one day give it a more sincere try, so I downloaded the app. Holy moly.

Fast forward to this week and I finally got around to trying the BOO BREW my app had messaged me about.

(Screen shot from App)

I went to a local Walgreens that the CocaCola Freestyle site said had a Freestyle machine. It was decked out for Halloween – perfect for my Boo Brew!

Let me say that I really didn’t research how to use this machine. I figured it would be simple enough. Maybe it is for others. Maybe I over think things. But this is how it went down for me:

I approach machine. I start the process. I begin to think: Oh jeez, this recipe shows percentages…I want ice…if I put ice in then I won’t be able to accurately figure out the ratio of the mix…is this cup wider at the top than the bottom…no…ok good…that helps…really they have people figuring out percentages to make the soda?…I don’t mind percentages, but how do I control the speed of the flow and stop exactly when I need to…let me just start…I won’t use ice…if worse comes to worse I’ll bring it home and add ice there…I guess after I mix it I can dump some and add the ice…no, adding ice will just splash all over…I’ll take it home…ok let me just start.

Selecting the different soda components is easy. First you choose a brand:

Then you select the variation of the brand you want and press the pour button:

I just stared at the warm-ish cup of glowing orange for a moment. I almost didn’t drink it – but I had to – for you my dear readers. I took a sip. It had a sharp orange taste with a filmy vanilla aftertaste. I took 2 sips and decided to bring it home to try with ice. I wanted to give it a fair shot.

Take two was equally as bad. DUMPED IT.

I think the idea of the Freestyle machine is cool. You can make over 100 different individual flavors and those can be combined to make even more potentially tasty beverages. I’ve since learned that you can use the app on your smartphone to somehow scan something on the machine and that will prepare the mix for you. Still not sure about how much ice you’re supposed to use – I messaged CocaCola Freestyle on Facebook about how much ice is suggested, but they haven’t written back. I will try a different mix soon and report back how using the app went. I wish their website had a full video showing how to use it. Maybe it does and I just can’t find it, lol.